Blueglass

“Looking back, it seems that was how Jude always was with me: keeping his distance, never asking for anything I might not want to give. That steadiness that I took to be a strength--his consistency--I realize now was a kind of boundary, a way of drawing a line in the sand. Like a sprinkling of salt at the threshold, it was a kind of spell to keep himself safe, unchanged. What he needed more than anything was to believe he needed nothing, that if I should ever leave, he'd remain the same man. But I had his key in my coat pocket and I was happy then, because it seemed like he was letting me in.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I wonder if there is something wrong with me, she thought, that I can get so much from so little, because all my joy comes from not doing–not spending summer afternoons in stuffy drawing-rooms listening to women setting their neighbours’ morals to rights over the bridge table, not spending summer evenings listening to men and women setting the world’s affairs to right over five-course dinners, not sewing in circles, nor reading in groups. I must be very selfish, she thought, for I want set nothing and no-one right; all I want is to be left in peace to make what I can of this problem called life for myself and my children. What would the world be like, she wondered, if everyone minded his own business?”
― Josephine Leslie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

“I'd have chosen another life if I were a pretty girl. Would I? she said; I'd have to be a pretty girl first, and then I'd have to choose among the possibilities open to a pretty girl. They weren't so various; not really. They may have looked various, to someone who wasn't, but there weren't so many choices when you knew”
― Alfred Hayes, My Face for the World to See

“There must be people out there who are not drawn to the shadow of what could have been, who feel no pull toward the other lives they could be living, but I certainly have never been one of them.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt